Produced by David Widger from page images generously provided by the Internet Archive THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK By Pierce Egan In Three Volumes Vol. II. London: Published By W. S. Johnson & Co. [Illustration: 0005] FLOWER OF THE FLOCK CHAPTER I.--SUITORS And art thou then, fond youth, secure of joy? Can no reverse thy flattering bliss destroy? Has treacherous Love no torment yet in store? Or hast thou never proved his fatal power P Whence flow’d those tears that late bedew’d thy cheek? Why sigh’d thy heart as if it strove to break? Why were the desert rocks invok’d to hear The plaintive accent of thy sad despair? Lyttleton. It was, as we have seen, through, the remarkable and unexpected return of Colonel Mires to England, and the no less singular circumstance of the rencontre in the Queen’s Bench, that old Wilton was reinstated in the position from which years back he had been, by the harsh rigour of the law, ruthlessly expelled. As Nathan Gomer had stated to Mr. Grahame, the Colonel not only came forward to prove the genuineness of his own signature and the integrity of the document to which it was attached, but he was able to show that a duplicate existed, to point out the solicitor in whose hands it had been placed, and to help to refresh this old man’s recollection as to what had become of that most important paper. The individual thus suddenly-dragged from his seclusion, had long retired from practice, but he yet retained many important deeds and documents, to which he had been attesting witness or a party in some way. It was, therefore, mainly by Colonel Mires’s instrumentality that Wilton was once more a man of wealth and position; and, knowing this, the former felt no scruple in becoming a frequent visitor at Mr. Wilton’s house. He had, indeed, a secret motive which impelled him to present himself pretty constantly at Mr. Wilton’s table. He had, not unmoved, looked upon the face of Flora Wilton; first in the courtyard of the Queen’s Prison, and many times since when surrounded by all those accessories to personal charms which elegant dress and freedom from anxiety afford. At first a high degree of admiration was raised in his breast by a personal beauty of rare excellence, which, at the same time, struck him as being familiar to him. A glorious star, worshipped in boyhood, since lost, and now suddenly reappearing in his sphere, which was only too sparsely studded with orbs of light.